An ethical person - like a politician, banker or lawyer - may know right from wrong, but unlike many of them, a moral person lives it. An Americanist first already knows that.
Bankers and their government agents will always act in their own best interests. Any residual benefit flowing down to the citizens by happenstance will just be litter.

How Long Would the US Navy Survive in a Shooting War?

Carriers today may be sunk from air, land or sea America
sees itself as a ruler of the world’s oceans. After all, the country —
which spends 10 times more on its military forces than the following
nine countries — has by far the biggest naval force. And as since the
Vietnam War they have dealt only with militarily inferior opponents,
they are extremely self-confident in their belief that they can defeat
everything and everyone. It is not surprising that some young Americans
even wear T-shirts with the logo: “United States Navy: The Sea is Ours.”

Perhaps
we need to meet this pride and arrogance with some understanding in
view of the numerical superiority of the U.S. Navy. In total, it
currently has 10 operational aircraft carriers (two in reserve), while
Russia and China have only one each.

Aircraft carriers are the
great pride of the U.S. Navy and are also perfect to underline visually
the claim of the ruler of the seas. They are therefore well liked by
U.S. presidents as stages for delivering speeches when the time comes to
tell the people that this unique nation has once again won a heroic
victory.

What thrilling moments these were (at least for Americans) when George W. Bush landed in a fighter jet on the USS Abraham Lincoln
(no, not as a pilot) and then, with the words “mission accomplished”
and “a job well done,” proclaimed the end of the Iraq war to the people.
As we know, the destruction of Iraq was carried out by the Americans
under the label of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We may still ask ourselves
what it had to do with freedom, but that’s a different story.

In
addition to their suitability as impressive orator stages, the aircraft
carriers also fulfill, of course, a military purpose. They can be
considered as small floating airports, which ship up to 100 fighter jets
to the scene of the action. Since they are equipped with the best
weapons, radar, and defense systems, until now they have experienced
almost no threat, especially since in the past the U.S. Navy parked them
preferably off the coasts of defenseless desert states.

But what
would it look like if the power of the U.S. Navy met its peer? The title
of this article already implies the answer: not so good, and it could
be that the patriotic U.S. Navy fans would hide their T-shirts quickly
in the closet.

Back in the 70s, Admiral Rickover, the “father of
nuclear navy,” had to answer the question before the U.S. Senate: “How
long would our aircraft carriers survive in a battle against the Russian
Navy?” His response caused disillusionment: “Two or three days before
they sink, maybe a week if they stay in the harbor.”

The reason
for the greatly reduced lifetime of the aircraft carrier in a battle
against the Russians is a deadly danger below the water: modern
submarines — especially Russian ones — are so powerful and difficult to
locate that they can send large battleships and aircraft carriers to the
bottom of the sea in the blink of an eye. The weakness of the U.S.
Navy, therefore, is their vulnerability when they compete with an enemy
that — using the language of the Americans — dominates the seas below
the water surface. Of course, the U.S. military analysts are aware of
this weakness, so one wonders why the U.S. Navy still adheres to the
doctrine “the bigger the better” and continues to rely on an armada of
aircraft carriers and large battleships.

Colonel Douglas McGregor,
a decorated combat veteran, author of four books, a PhD and military
analyst, gives the answer: “Strategically, it makes no sense, but the
construction of large ships, of course, creates a lot of jobs.”

So
the threat of Russian submarines, torpedoes and anti-ship missiles is
well known by the Americans — a fact which Roger Thompson’s book, Lessons Not Learned: The U.S. Navy’s Status Quo Culture, also points out. A brief excerpt:

As
Howard Bloom and Dianne Star Petryk-Bloom advised in 2003, both the
Russians and Chinese now have the deadly SS-N-22 Sunburn missile at
their disposal. This massive long-range missile, equipped with nuclear
or conventional warheads, is extremely difficult to detect or destroy.
According to Jane’s Information Group, it is more than capable of
destroying any U.S. aircraft carrier. More to the point, Timperlake (a
Naval Academy graduate) and Triplett warned that the Sunburn missile is
designed to do one thing: kill American aircraft carriers and
Aegis-class cruisers.

The SS-N-22 missile skims the surface of the
water at two-and-a-half times the speed of sound until just before
impact, when it lifts up and then heads straight down into the target’s
deck. Its two-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead has almost twenty times
the explosive power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The U.S.
Navy has no defence against this missile system. As retired Admiral Eric
McVadon put it: “It’s enough to make the U.S. 7th (Pacific) Fleet sink
twice.”

In addition to this concept-related, almost
inevitable weakness of large warships, there is another reason for the
vulnerability of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. armed forces in general:
their arrogance and the associated underestimation of their opponents.
Anyone who underestimates his enemy grows imprudent and holds bad cards
in the event of a surprise attack. This happened in 2000, when the
American aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk was caught by the Russians on the wrong foot.

A
pair of Russian warplanes that made at least three high-speed passes
over a U.S. aircraft carrier stationed in the Sea of Japan in October
constituted a much more serious threat than the Pentagon has admitted
and were easily in a position to destroy the ship if the planes had had
hostile intentions, say Navy personnel.According to reports, a
Russian air force Su-24 “Fencer” accompanied by a Su-27 “Flanker” made
unopposed passes over the USS Kitty Hawk on Oct. 9, as the carrier was
being refueled.Russian fighters and reconnaissance planes made a
second attempt to get close to the carrier on Nov. 9 — a repeat
performance for which the Pentagon, as well as eyewitnesses aboard ship,
said the carrier was prepared. But it was the first incident in October
that caused alarm.Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said during a
regularly scheduled press briefing Nov. 30 that the Russian fighters
were detected on radar well in advance of their high-speed passes. Naval
officers aboard ship who spoke of the incident on the condition of
anonymity agreed.However, at the time the carrier’s combat
information center alerted the ship’s commander, Capt. Allen G. Myers,
that the Russian fighters were inbound, none of the carrier’s fighters
were airborne. The ship carries 85 aircraft, according to Navy figures,
and has a crew of over 5,500. Witnesses said Myers immediately
ordered the launch of alert fighters, but the ship’s scheduled fighter
squadron was on “Alert-30” status — a minimum launch time of 30 minutes
where pilots are “in the ready room” but are not sitting in cockpits
waiting to be launched.Bacon told reporters only that there “may
have been a slight delay” in getting the interceptors in the air,
explaining that because the Kitty Hawk was taking on fuel, it was not
sailing fast enough to launch its aircraft.One naval officer
onboard the ship said, “40 minutes after the CO [commanding officer]
called away the alerts,” the Russian planes “made a 500-knot, 200-foot
pass directly over the tower” of the carrier.Before the Kitty
Hawk could get a single plane airborne, the Russian fighters made two
more passes. Worse, witnesses said, the first plane off the deck was an
EA-6B Prowler — a plane used primarily for electronic jamming of an
enemy’s radar and air defenses, not a fighter capable of intercepting
another warplane.The EA-6B “ended up in a one-versus-one with a
Flanker just in front of the ship,” one witness said. “The Flanker was
all over his a.... He was screaming for help when finally an F/A-18
Hornet from our sister squadron got off the deck and made the intercept.
It was too late.”Naval personnel noted that “the entire crew
watched overhead as the Russians made a mockery of our feeble attempt of
intercepting them.”The Clinton administration downplayed the
incident .... The BBC, however, said that it was evident by the
photographs taken by the Russian jets that there was “panic aboard” when
the planes made their over-flights.

Our American
readers will now perhaps argue that this humiliating incident happened
15 years ago and such a thing is no longer possible nowadays. But most
readers of Russia Insider remember the events of April 2014 when the
ultra-modern destroyer USS Donald Cook was paralyzed by a single SU-24.

For those readers who unfortunately missed the story, here it is: At the beginning of April last year the Americans sent the USS Donald Cook
into the Black Sea, with the permission of Turkey, to protest against
the Russian annexation of Crimea and to demonstrate their military
strength. The destroyer was equipped with the most advanced Aegis Combat
System, a naval weapons systems which ensures the detection, tracking
and destruction of multiple targets at the same time. In addition, the USS Donald Cook
is equipped with four large radars, whose power is comparable to that
of several stations. For protection, it carries more than 50
anti-aircraft missiles of various types.

According to the
“Montreux Convention,” non-Black Sea state warships are permitted to
stay in the Black Sea for no longer than 21 days. The Americans, of
course, ignored this rule, and Russia responded by sending an SU-24. The
Sukhoi was unarmed but equipped with the latest electronic warfare
device, called Khibiny.

When the SU-24 approached the destroyer, all radar and control systems, information transfers, etc., of the USS Donald Cook
were suddenly paralyzed by Khibiny. In other words, the seemingly
superior Aegis system was completely off — like when you turn off your
TV with the remote control.

Subsequently, the Sukhoi simulated 12 missile attacks at low altitude on the virtually blind and deaf USS Donald Cook,
and we can imagine that the two SU-24 aircraft pilots had a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, at this time there was neither John McCain nor NATO
Commander Phillip Breedlove on board the ship — they would certainly
have received some long-lasting impressions from this demonstration.

After this incident, the USS Donald Cook
chose to immediately and at full speed move towards a port in Romania,
where 27 shocked crew members asked for dismissal from the service.

This
story shows us that Americans still overestimate the capabilities of
their armed forces and do not realize (or do not want to admit) that
Russia’s military technology is in many areas superior and has an
advantage that cannot be offset quickly.

So, as long as a single
Russian fighter jet can turn off a complete U.S. warship with the latest
warning and fire control systems by just pushing a button, the answer
to the question “How long would the U.S. Navy survive?” today is the
same as in the old Cold War days. Source